| Sorin Paliga |
|
Abstract: Two words of the Romanian vocabulary, relevant for both their religious implications and for their origin, have been analyzed. It is not rare to invoke etymology when trying to reconstruct realities of the past. The problems begin when a given etymology is erroneous. The two cases are also relevant from this point of view. The first is Crăciun ‘Christmas’, also (at dialectal level) ‘piece of wood, a branch’. The various attempts to explain its origin from Latin (the most evoked is creatio, creationis), from Sl. Kračun, and even from Albanian kërcú are erroneous. The analysis attempts a radical correction to all these explanations. It is connected to the old beliefs in fires, in this case, connected to the winter solstice. Frazer’s The Golden Bough offers relevant parallels in various cultural areas. A brief comparison with Hanukkah is also presented. The second series of terms refers to the semantic sphere ‘to save someone from sin, error or evil’. This is reflected in the forms a mântui ‘to save, to redeem’ (in the religious sense), mântuire, the corresponding noun, and Mântuitorul ‘the Saviour’, i.e., Jesus Christ. The hypothesis of a Hungarian origin of the Romanian forms should be discarded, although largely accepted. Neither the linguistic-etymological approach, nor the place of these forms in the general vocabulary allows for such a view. The Romanian forms must be explained as derived from the Latin *manu tuitus < manu tueor, the initial meaning referring to a doctor’s hands healing a sick or wounded person, then extended to the magic hands of Jesus. Both the classical Latin texts and the early Christian texts, notably St. Augustine’s Confessions offer clear examples.
Keywords: Christmas, Midwinter fires, to heal, magic hands.
REFERENCES
ABBREVIATIONS
BER = Georgiev et al. 1971–2017
DEX = dexonline.ro
TESz = Benkő 1967–198
0WAD = Buchholz et al. 1977
PRIMARY SOURCES
Opera Sancti Augustini
Confessiones / Confessions, texte établi et traduit par Pierre de Labriolle, 10e tirage. Bilingual edition Latin and French. Paris: Les Belles Lettres 1969.
Confessions, English version, translated by E. B. Pusey in Project Gutenberg: https://www.gutenberg.org/files/3296/3296-h/3296-h.htm [visited on July 4th, 2023].
Confessions, translated by Henry Chadwick, Oxford University Press 1991.
WEB AND DIGITAL DICTIONARIES
Britannica = https://www.britannica.com/topic/Hanukkah/Traditions
DEX (Dicționarul explicativ al limbii române) – http://dexonline.ro/
Prima Elementa. Dictionnaire Latin-Français – http://www.prima-elementa.fr/Dico.htm
Scriba, Latin-English dictionary, https://apps.apple.com/app/id1439798821
BOOKS AND STUDIES
Benkő, Loránd et al (1967–1980) A magyar nyelv történeti–etimológiai szótára (an historical-etymological dictionary of Hungarian), I–IV (Budapest).
Benkő, Loránd et al. (1992) Etymologisches Wörterbuch des Ungarischen (Budapest).
Brâncuș, Gr. (1991) Istoria cuvintelor (București).
Buchholz et al. (1977) Wörterbuch albanisch-deutsch (Leipzig).
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Frazer, J. G. (2009) The Golden Bough. A Study of Magic and Religion. First published in 1890. The Floating Press: https://floatingpress.com/ (20.9.2023)
Georgiev, V. et al (1971–2017) Bălgarski etimologičen rečnik (BER), 8 vols. (Sofia).
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Paliga, S. (1987) “The social structure of the southeast European societies in the Middle Ages. A linguistic view”, Linguistica 27, 111–126.
Paliga, S. (1997) Influenţe romane şi preromane în limbile slave de sud (Bucureşti).
Paliga, S. (2006a) An Etymological Lexicon of the Indigenous (Thracian) Elements in Romanian (București).
Paliga, S. (2006b) Influențe romane și preromane în limbile slave de sud, 2nd revised edition (București).
Paliga, S. (2011) “*Manu tuitus: mântuit = salvat de mâna Lui”, in: D. Tetean (ed) In honorem magistri Onufrie Vințeler (Cluj-Napoca), 241–250.
Paliga, S. (2012) “The ‘Trichotomical’ Character of Proto-Slavic and the Long-Debated Issue of the Oldest Slavic Borrowings in Romanian”, in: Ilona Janyšková & Helena Karlíková (ed) Theory and Empiricism in Slavonic Diachronic (Praha), 347–363.
Paliga, S. (2018) “Hungarian, or rather substratum elements in Romanian?”, in: M. Mladenova (ed) Balkanistic Forum, vol. 3, 202–217.
Paliga, S. (2023) An Etymological Dictionary of the Romanian Language (Berlin) (in print when this paper is being prepared).
Paliga, S. & Teodor, E. S. (2009) Lingvistica și arheologia slavilor timpurii. O altă vedere de la Dunărea de Jos (Târgoviște).
Pușcariu, S. (1976) Limba română. I – privire generală (București).
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